16. Somewhere Beyond the Realms of Physical Possibility
16. SOMEWHERE BEYOND THE REALMS OF PHYSICAL POSSIBILITY
ELOWYN
In Nightguard I’d been all but invisible to most of the shifters there. To them I’d been a hard-working servant whom they could trust with the care of their youngest dragons—valuable to a certain extent, but only insomuch as I could serve them. The need to prove myself had driven me for as long as I could remember, a personal barbed whip lashing unrelentingly at my back, forcing me onward when I would have otherwise staggered.
As the youngest of all dragon protectors, Xeno had been propelled by a similar motivation. He’d trained even harder than I had—since he’d been afforded the privilege of training pretty much whenever he wanted, unlike me, who’d had to squeeze exercises into the dark hours of predawn or the late night so as not to skip them entirely.
Through his perseverance and dedication, Xeno had become a formidable warrior, and his physique reflected every bit of his efforts. His back and shoulders were broad and strong, his thighs thick and bulging. His body was a puzzle of lean, marked muscles, where every piece fit perfectly alongside its neighbor. With his every step across the edge of the clearing, his muscles rippled—and his cock bounced, bumping against his thighs.
Now, I’d been raised among shifters who had to undress before transforming or shred whatever they were wearing. The protectors shifted often, which meant they walked to and from their piles of clothing completely naked on the regular. Raised among them, I’d known no different. As a child I’d been content to frolic in the nude with them—or as much as anyone would be inclined to frolic in the frozen tundra that was the foothills of the Nightguard Mountains—until Zako had started with his talks of securing my maidenhood in my preadolescence.
I’d seen Xeno naked dozens, more likely hundreds of times. But that had been before he’d made it clear he wanted me as more than friends, before we’d kissed.
“Oh my,” uttered Azariah.
I glanced at him to find his horse face agog, his mouth hanging slightly open, his soft beard fluttering in a breeze that appeared to affect only him.
“He’s magnificent too, isn’t he?” Azariah said.
It was a rhetorical question, I thought, returning my attention to Xeno, who was closer now. His wide shoulders tapered into a trim waist, and a pronounced V between his hips pointed at his dick like an arrow with perfect aim. Gulping, I forced my eyes above his waist—not an easy feat when he was such a beautiful man—and stalked forward to meet him.
Eyes pinned on his, which were more green than blue with so much foliage around to draw it out, I called out before we reached each other, “Hey.”
“Hey,” he said with a self-assured smile. We met at the side of the clearing with the unconscious fae gathered a few body lengths from us.
I smiled too. “I take it you lost your pants in the shift?” I’d seen his torn pants. But I hadn’t thought of anything better to say, and I really had to keep my focus. Rush’s body was just as beautiful, if not more so because Rush was my mate, as perfect as a male could get for me. But I was a hot-blooded woman and Xeno was gorgeous. I had perfectly sharp eyesight that didn’t miss a single dip of his muscled ridges. By sunshine, how many sculpted muscles could a man have?
Stare darting back up to his face—hey, at least I hadn’t accidentally checked out his dick again—my smile widened to cover for my discomfort. “Thanks for helping with Ivar.”
He drew closer so that a mere foot-and-a-half separated us. “Of course. You know I’ll do anything to protect you, Wyn. Besides, we need him. He might have intel that’ll help us murder the queen bitch, and I can’t have her getting her hands on you again.”
“True.”
“I’m gonna go help the others get him to talk. But I need some pants first. Don’t wanna go shocking anyone if I can help it.” He waited a beat, then added, “Like you.”
“Ha,” I blurted. “I’m not shocked.”
He snorted. “Yeah, Wyn, sure. You forget I know you better than anyone.”
Before my unwilling arrival in Embermere I would have agreed with him, without hesitation. Even Zako hadn’t known me as well because I’d believed Zako to be my father, and a strict disciplinarian of one at that. But after connecting with Rush as deeply as he and I had? No, Xeno didn’t know me better than Rush did. Not anymore. No way. But I didn’t have the heart to tell my best friend that.
So I chuckled dismissively. “Let’s find you some pants, then.” I turned toward where I’d find Pru and Edsel and … oh, and Larissa… If Azariah had been agog, Larissa appeared dumbfounded. Her mouth hanging open, she did nothing to hide how studiously she was admiring my friend.
A surprised, “Oh,” slipped out of me before I glanced back at Xeno. He, too, had noticed his admirer. He watched her with a curious tilt to his brows.
“She’s Rush’s sister,” I offered, unsure who’d met whom since we hadn’t had the chance for proper introductions. “His younger sister,” I qualified when Xeno only continued looking at her. “She’s quite sweet.”
“Okay,” he said noncommittally, when Larissa appeared to come to her senses with a start.
Her eyes went wide as a pink the same tone as her hair swept up her neck and across her cheeks. Urgently, she snapped her head in the opposite direction, ending up looking at Pru, who was watching the scene unfold too.
Seeing me spot her, Pru hitched Saffron onto her hip and started toward us. Even though she was practically cock height, she was unruffled. That was when I remembered she’d been Saturn’s attendant, and as a servant of the palace where she was expected to be invisible yet always immediately available, she’d probably seen some shit over her years of service.
Saffron jumped back into my arms before I decided I was ready to receive him. But it was just as well, since as soon as her hands were free Pru reached under her frock and emerged once again with her handy-dandy emergency kit. She set to unraveling it, and Saffron lunged to playfully snap at the canvas holder. Hastily, I pulled him back.
“No biting Pru’s kickass kit, Saffy,” I scolded. “We keep needing it.”
“I take it Milord Xeno could use some new breeches?” Pru asked while unfurling her case. It started no wider than two of her fingers side by side, and this time she unrolled until it plopped over her black dragon-like feet and kept going.
“Yes please, Pru,” Xeno said. “But remember, none of that ‘milord’ shit.”
Ah, of course. After I’d vanished from the Sorumbra they’d trekked to the palace together. They would have had plenty of time to become familiar with each other .
Pru chuckled amiably while backing up to make more room for the unwinding kit, until it trailed over a bumpy tree root and she’d soon run into Edsel, who was bent stiffly at the waist over one of his patients. Oh no, were his knees bothering him again?
“Does it have no end?” I asked Pru, a tinge of awe to my question.
“Only till it gives me what I need, Mis—Elowyn.” Without releasing the case, she crouched beside the relevant stretch of it. The tip of a gray tongue peeked out from between her lips as she snaked one hand into a deep pocket of the holder and rummaged around inside it even though the pocket was only a few inches deep. Her tongue pushed out farther as her arm disappeared into the pocket up to her shoulder. She leaned forward until her shoulder went in too and waved her arm around inside … somewhere far beyond the realms of physical possibility.
With the dragonling clutched against my chest, and forgetting my friend was naked, I bumped my arm against his. “Magic is so fucking cool, is it not?”
He bumped arms back, his curiosity affixed to the scene in front of us. “ So fucking cool. To think what we could do in Nightguard with magic like this.”
“By sunshine, maybe we could even have hot running water like they do at the palace.”
“Damn, that’d be awesome.”
I didn’t continue the exploration with him. I was too busy realizing I’d spoken as if Nightguard were my home when it really wasn’t .
Pru slapped what remained of the rolled canvas onto her lap, grunted, and dove headfirst into the pocket up to her waist. Saffron whined, perhaps thinking the goblin was leaving, and Xeno bumped my shoulder again.
“I can read you better than you think I can. I know you’re not going back to Nightguard.”
I didn’t say anything, pretending I was too fascinated by the objectively fascinating scene unfolding in front of us.
“I stay where you stay, Wyn.”
I glanced up at him. Saffron took the opportunity to lick his sandpaper tongue up my neck and chin.
Xeno’s stare burrowed into mine. “I’m not leaving you. I don’t care.”
I don’t care . That could mean a whole lot of things…
“I just want you to be happy, X,” I finally said.
“And I want the same for you, more than anything.”
“You made an oath as a dragon protector,” I pointed out. “To defend the dragons, no matter what.”
“I can do that here too. There are plenty of dragons that need my protection in the Mirror World.”
I couldn’t argue with that, especially when I’d abandoned so many of them in the queen’s dungeon. We stared at each other for several more beats, several more swipes of the dragonling’s tongue, before Pru grunted with fervor. As the sounds emerged from the pocket, they sounded impossibly far away .
I started forward. “Shit, she looks like she might fall in! Think we should hold her feet?”
Xeno was already squatting to reach for her, his girthy, long cock hanging between his legs…
“No, wait,” I said urgently. “What if your touching her messes with her magic? I don’t know how these things work. She could maybe get stuck in there if we interrupt her?” I had no fucking idea, really. I was still waiting for someone to teach me all about the ways of the Mirror World, though at this point I was accepting no one ever would.
Xeno looked over his shoulder at me. I pinned my eyes to his with a steely determination not to admire the rest of him all up on display. “So what should I do?” he asked.
“I … fuck.” Guiding Saffron’s face away from mine, I nibbled on my lip. “I’ll go ask Edsel, but?—”
Pru began grunting even more loudly, but she was backing out. I exhaled in relief. She popped out of the pocket, her hair, usually so limp, frizzy and standing on end in places—and holding a pair of charcoal breeches held triumphantly above her head. With a grin, she handed them to Xeno.
“These were Prince Saturn’s. Best put them on, milo—Xeno.” She leaned toward him conspiratorially and whispered loudly enough that I could hear. “Before Lady Larissa’s eyes pop out and go rolling and I gotta go fetch ‘em.” Then she threw her head back and laughed.
I shook my head in disbelief, barely recognizing the fretful it’ll be off with our heads goblin I’d first met. When she looked up at me, I couldn’t help it, I beamed down at her.
By the time she secured her kit once more, Xeno was fully dressed and stalking off toward the cabin to join the others in interrogating our sole direct link to the queen. Larissa watched his retreat until he turned the corner and was out of sight.
“Mind taking him again?” I asked Pru while I kissed Saffron on the head and extended him toward her.
“Never.” She accepted him and nuzzled his cheek with hers.
“Thanks,” I said absently, already focused on Larissa.
Seated beside Ramana, she saw me coming and stood. Nearly as much as West, she was loath to leave her sister’s side.
“How is she?” I asked while walking several steps away to stand at the edge of the clearing so we could have some privacy. Well, aside from the nosy dragon who listened in whenever he wanted.
Huuuuh . I am not nosy. I am a fuerin, Einar protested right away.
And what a magnificent fuerin you are, I said, trying to shortcut the conversation.
It seemed to work. I got another Huuuuh and then he quieted.
Larissa leaned her back against a tree and brushed her hair from her face. “Ramana’s the same. She hasn’t woken up or moved at all. But I just…” She shook her head, her loose hair scraping bark. A couple of strands to either side of her head clung to it. “I can’t stop staring at her. I can’t believe she’s really here and alive .”
“I’m so grateful she is.”
“I-I can barely stand it. My heart’s about to burst. Rush is probably feeling the same, if he’d stop trying to take care of everyone else all the time to take care of himself.”
I was ruminating on that when she added, “Sorry about earlier.”
“Earlier?”
“You know.” She blushed prettily. “I didn’t mean to stare at your friend like that. I was just surprised. And he’s so … so…”
“Beautiful, strong, and manly are some adjectives that come to mind.”
The pink across her cheeks deepened until it was darker than her hair. “Yeah. All that.”
She pushed away from the tree, untangling from it. Training her gaze on her feet, she asked, “Is he, ah, taken?”
“Taken?” Of course I understood what she was getting at. How could I not? But it was too cute to see her all flustered like this.
She looked at me. “Does he have a partner? A-a romantic one?”
I let my smile shine through. “Nope, he sure doesn’t. ”
“Oh! Really? I would have thought someone like him would.”
He didn’t because he was waiting for me…
I ran my teeth along the inside of my lip. “I’m happy to put in a good word with him about you.”
She dipped her head for a moment, tucking her hair behind her ears. “That would be nice. Thank you, Elowyn.”
“My pleasure. Now, you’ve gotta tell me, why in a dragon’s nest do you have blood across your boobs, of all things? And are you wearing tablecloths ?”
Frowning, she glanced down at herself. “Yeah. I am. We were on the run until we got here, so there was no time to fix any of it before now, and then there was Ramana… But I have to get the piercings out. I don’t want to get stuck with any reminders of her , and I can feel my body trying to heal around them. Which is actually really weird because my body isn’t good at healing. That’s the whole problem.” Her blush receded as her shoulders slumped. “It’s why Rush has had to do whatever the queen’s asked of him for so long. Because of me. It’s all my fault.”
I blinked a few times. “There’s a whole lot to unpack there. What do you mean you have to get the piercings out? What piercings, and out of where?”
With a regretful sigh, Larissa quickly recounted the whole story: how the queen summoned her to the palace for her usual healings with Braque, how she ordered Larissa “dressed to entertain” instead, which turned out to be entirely undressed since I sure as shit wasn’t counting trufy feathers as fucking attire . How Rush had charged up the stage to save her, and when the queen had ordered him to entertain instead of her, he’d refused. They’d escaped into a tunnel, where she’d nabbed the tablecloths, and they’d been on the run from the queen and her guards ever since.
When she finished her story, I had so many comments—mostly expletives—but I had to wait for my throat to loosen and my nostrils to stop flaring like sails to be able to speak. Once I did, the words came out in a stilted staccato while I’m so gonna murder the bitch kept repeating in my mind on a loop.
Huuuuh , Einar showed up to say, but I didn’t answer whatever it was he even meant.
Spitting mad had nothing on my levels of righteous fury. “Let’s start with the piercings. We get them out first, then Edsel can help heal you.”
Larissa drew closer. “I’d appreciate that. I think it will be easier if you pull them out than me.”
“We’ll do it fast,” I promised around the hard line of fury that was my mouth. After positioning her back to Edsel, Pru, West, and the others, and looking to see that other than Einar, Azariah, and Bertram, everyone else was in the cabin, I carefully swept aside the edge of the tablecloth.
My gasp stuck in my throat at the sight, which was the only reason I heard another tinier gasp from a couple of feet to my left. I spun my head in its direction. “Zafi,” I accused.
The little fairy tsked as if annoyed at being caught.
“You know it’s not polite to eavesdrop, don’t you?”
She sighed with another tsk. I could actually picture her rolling her tiny eyes despite her invisibility.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s see you.”
In the next instant, there she was. Her wings buzzed in a blur behind her as she glared at me.
I arched my brow at her.
She slapped her hands against her sides. “Fine. Sooooor-rrrryyyy , okay? Is that what you want to hear? You wouldn’t have even figured out I was here if her boobs didn’t look so bad.”
As if registering what she said only after the words were out of her mouth, Zafi jerked her head toward Larissa. I did too.
Larissa smiled sadly. “It’s okay. Let’s just get this done. Now that I’ve seen how it looks, I can’t stop thinking about how much it’s going to hurt.”
I lifted the cloth to peer at her nipple again. It was red and swollen; a dark yellow pus oozed from around the metal ring. The feathers were an iridescent indigo that reflected a golden shine wherever the dappled sunlight hit. Ordinarily I would have found them stunning. Crusted with Larissa’s blood and the queen’s influence all over them, they were hideous.
“Damn her,” I spat under my breath. Then, to distract Larissa, I asked, “So, what do you mean your body doesn’t heal?”
I wiped my hands on my leathers, then gripped either side of the ring, and waited for her to look me in the eye and nod .
I yanked the ring apart. She whimpered. Zafi gasped again, her little hands flying to cover her mouth. Larissa’s knees knocked before she locked them in place.
“You okay?” I asked, still holding her stare.
“Yes,” she said, but it trembled. “Do the other one.”
I flung the piercing and feathers to the ground, and circled to her other side. “So?” I prompted.
“So I’m sick, really sick. My body doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. Without Braque’s treatments…” The next came out as a whisper: “I’ll get weaker and die.”
I yanked out the second piercing. Her eyes went blank before refocusing. She sucked in a ragged breath. “I just want to get to see Ramana alive and well before I go. That’s all I ask for. And then at least Rush will be free to live his life without sacrificing for me all the time.”
“I’m sure that’s not how he feels.” After examining the second piercing, and Larissa’s blood caked on it, my flaring nostrils were back. “I’ll go get Edsel. He’s the best healer there is. Maybe he can fix you up all over.”
“Thanks, Elowyn, but no. Braque has already tried. It’s no use.”
“Hmmm,” Zafi said in a high-pitched squeak over my shoulder, and just as I was turning toward her, Edsel started barking orders loudly and urgently at Pru.
One of the dormant fae was thrashing violently. His teeth were rattling, his dirty, clumped hair bouncing. Then he clenched, every muscle going rigid, arcing his back off the ground.
I allowed the piercing to drop as I sprinted across the short distance, skidding to my knees next to Edsel with a double twinge of pain along a healing slice to my knee on one side, my shin on the other leg.
Ignoring it, I asked, “What can I do? How can I help?”
“I don’t know, dammit,” Edsel snapped. “He’s dyin’, ain’t he? And I ain’t got a blasted idea how to save ‘im.”